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LaVerne Jones was an employee of the Michigan Bell Telephone Company. The materials include board of directors minutes, correspondence, publications, reports, maps, and photographs.

The LaVerne Jones Collection contains records documenting the Michigan Bell Telephone Company's history, primarily in the first half of the twentieth century. The records contain correspondence, publications, reports, maps, photographic materials, and several miscellaneous documents.

Correspondence includes topics such as audits, stock, legal issues, rate controversies, organizational changes, and government nationalization of the telephone system in 1918-1919. Much of the correspondence is addressed to or signed by Mr. A. von Schlegell, general manager.

Prominent publications include telephone directories at the state, county, and local levels; a history of the telephone in Michigan; several issues of "The Michigan Bell" magazine; an engineering bulletin; and a manual of telephone services.

Reports consist of annual company reports, topical reports such as one on inventory and appraisal, and a large work entitled "Histories of Michigan Bell Telephone Company Exchanges."

Miscellaneous records include research documents relating to the company's formation, early history, and organizational structure as well as board of directors minutes from the Valley Home Telephone Company at the time it was acquired by Michigan Bell in 1922.

The maps consist primarily of base maps which are marked with telephone lines and proposed extensions of lines, as well as boundaries of areas serviced by Michigan Bell. Mapped areas include Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Benton Harbor, and the Bay City-Saginaw area, as well as the state of Michigan as a whole

Photographic materials include both prints and negatives and feature mostly company facilities and equipment such as transformers and switchboards. There is also a photo celebrating the consolidation of the Michigan State Telephone Company and the Valley Home Telephone Company in 1922. Also contained in this collection are photos of telephone poles being transported by train and a Michigan central train wreck.